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How Abstract Expressionism makes for great basketball

Ryan SachettaSan Antonio CurrentJanuary 25, 2012

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In 1962, pivoting on a tip from his father, the narrative journalist
John McPhee returned to his alma-mater Princeton to witness a dynamic
freshman basketball player named Bill Bradley. Typically, freshman games
were sparsely attended, but Bradley’s ballyhooed arrival on the
Princeton hardwood resulted in a sell out. McPhee was immediately
smitten with Bradley’s seemingly perfect repertoire, the way his
offensive precision wedded his unending defense. Bradley’s unmistakable
range as a basketball player was only topped by his smarts, which
eventually earned him a Rhodes Scholarship.

“It seemed to me that I had been watching all the possibilities of
the game that I had ever imagined, and then some,” McPhee wrote. By
1964, the 21-year-old soon-to-be U.S. Olympian agreed to cooperate for
McPhee’s New Yorker profile, “A Sense of Where You Are.” At one
point in the profile-turned-book McPhee describes Princeton coach Butch
van Breda Kolff as an “Abstract Expressionist of basketball” because he
refused to implement a set offense, electing free-flowing spontaneity
instead with Bradley at the helm. The cover of the current edition of
the book offers a centered red circle reminiscent of a painting by
noteworthy Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb.

Bradley’s art wasn’t built on flash as he refused to embellish his
game. Nor was it predicated on ego demonstrated in his tireless
commitment to finding the open man nearest the basket. (Tim Duncan,
anyone?) The artistry of Bill Bradley was encapsulated in his loyalty to
process. He understood the athlete, like the artist, needed muscle
memory — a byproduct of hours upon months upon years of practice, sweat,
and sleepless nights. Bradley said it best: “When you have played
basketball for a while, you don’t need to look at the basket when you
are in close like this,” he said, throwing a ball over his shoulder and
right through the hoop. “You develop a sense of where you are.”